Joseph Prince — Come As You Are and Receive Your Miracle

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Law is different, completely different from grace. Law demands, grace supplies. Hey, New Creation Church! One of the things that I believe that the gospel of grace does to you is that it makes you generous. It opened up our heart and that's what I see in all of you people and for that, I thank you. I salute you, especially for making the gospel preaching so much easier by your testimony, amen? We're not perfect, people. We're the first to tell you if you're a guest here, you say, "No, the church is full of hypocrites". All right, let me just tell you this, one more won't make a difference, come, come, come, come, praise God, okay? Actually, the whole world is full of hypocrites, okay?

And I want to touch on that as well today because I think that there's something about this hypocrisy that evokes the greatest response from Jesus. Of all the sins that Jesus publicly rebukes and exposes in the gospels, you know, you can never find, you can never read anywhere, he rebuked the tax collectors, the social outcasts, the prostitutes of his day. You cannot find anywhere in the gospels that he rebuked them, but he rebuked the Pharisees, the self-righteous ones because hypocrisy, all right, brings out that anger in him. And we're about to see why that does so in our Lord and when you find it, you will see how lovely he is. It's because he loved them, okay?

And but before that, I just want to share that during this trip, I had the privilege showing, for the very first time, a video that I've been preparing for the longest time to show all of you because it's based on a revelation that God gave me many years ago in Israel. And it's about Jesus at the Mount of Beatitudes and right after the Mount of Beatitudes, he's preaching at the Sermon on the Mount, he cleansed the leper. And for the first time, we showed it because it was only ready when I was there in Israel. That's how close it was. And I received it like two days before we screened it.

So, for the first time I'm gonna show it to you but before that, I just want to share the background of this video. I feel like this video portrays, to a certain extent, the loveliness of our Lord Jesus Christ. You know, everywhere we go in Israel I always encourage people, look for Jesus. The guides can tell you the facts and the details of that place and give you the historical background. He can even be very knowledgeable about the historical Jesus, right? But many of them are not saved, but it's your part to look at all those places and see Jesus, amen, see his beauty, his glories, his excellencies, amen?

So, one of my favorite places, especially the Mount of Beatitudes. You can see a picture the Mount of Beatitudes here and this is the place where... this is confirmed the exact location, okay? And there are studies along these lines and all that. And not only that, it is almost acoustically perfect. In other words, we've done it before. Our pastors when we are there and all that, you see where the banana plantation is? The banana plantation down there, that is where the people would have been, the multitudes. And you see where these rocks are? That's where Jesus would have seated. Now, he might have sat on one of these rocks. They're not too many rocks there in this location, but he might have sat on one. The Bible says he went up a mountain and he sat down and he preached to the people, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the peacemakers," right? Up there on that mount.

This is the place. And it's acoustically almost perfect because there was a study done by a university in America, they studied this whole topography of this place and they found that it's acoustically, acoustically almost perfect, and we tried it out. We had pastors go down beyond the banana plantation way back there. All right, there's a path there so we stood down there. In fact, I stood down there once or twice and one pastor will run up here, sat on one of these rocks and would cry out, just in a raised voice, not yelling, just saying, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God". And his voice will be carried across the valley. You can hear this voice. So, Jesus did not need to have a microphone. His Father has prepared the place for him. Isn't that amazing, amen?

So, this is the location on the Mount of Beatitudes. I know many of you have been there. So, what happened was that a number of years ago I was up there with the pastors in one of our many visits there, and I took some time to go this way. So, let's say I'm facing the banana plantation where the people would have been when Jesus preached. So, I left the pastors talking down here and I went this way. And it's very interesting that when Jesus cleansed the leper, the Bible tells us that we all know that leprosy, a type of sin, right? Leprosy is something that when you contract it, you are supposed to be out of the camp, you are to live in a place far away. Those of you watched that movie "Ben Hur," you saw that, you know, they are by themselves and they cannot mix with the multitudes.

So, the Bible says that after Jesus preached, he cleansed the leper. Obviously, the leper is not among the multitude, right? He cannot be among the multitude. He'll be stoned to death because under the law, you touch a leper, the leper is considered unclean, a type of sin, and when you touch the leper, you become unclean. So, right after Jesus preached to the people... let's say I'm facing the Mount of Beatitudes, right? I'm facing the people on the Mount of Beatitudes. I move this way and that's what I did for the first time, not think of anything, all right, just going this way. And I realized this path goes all the way to Capernaum.

Now, the next miracle after he cleansed the leper, the Bible says Jesus entered Capernaum, so it's exactly this way. Facing the people, he would have gone this way. He didn't go down to the people. For the longest time, I thought he went down to the multitude and yet, the chapter 8 after he finishes the Sermon on the Mount, chapter 8 opens by saying, when Jesus finished the sermon, when Jesus came down the mountain, the multitudes followed him. I always thought he came down this way where the people were, but if he came down that way, then that phrase, "The multitudes followed him" doesn't make sense because he's going towards them, right? If I go towards you, you cannot follow me, right? But if I go another way, that's when you follow me.

So, he must have gone on his way. So, he went on his way and I was walking this way and all of sudden the Lord arrested me. I saw a huge rock on the side, all right, a pile of rocks on the side and there was other slabs of stone across the area, strewn across the area, and the Lord began to give me an inner vision and a beautiful story of the leper. And I began to see the leper could have hidden under one of these rocks. So, I looked at the rock here and I look at where Jesus would have stood up here and I began to realize that he would have seen Jesus without the multitudes seeing him. He could have heard Jesus without the multitudes, you know, detecting him.

So, I wondered, what did he hear during that time? Which part of the Sermon on the Mount do you reckon he heard? Maybe he heard Jesus says, "Look at the birds of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, yet your heavenly Father takes care of them. Are you not of more value than the birds"? Then I can see a bird come right to where his rock was where he was hiding and chirping, almost like telling him, "Why are you so worried? You are of more value than I am, and yet God feeds me. He'll take care of you," right?

So, just imagine a leper not being touched for the longest time, we do not know how long. He probably has loved ones, a baby that has grown a few years or whatever, but, you know, he has never touched them and he's never been touched. I think I'll leave the story to the video. And also when we did this video, I was wanting it to really present the beauty of my Lord. The way I saw him, the way he revealed it to me, the Holy Spirit showed me about Jesus in that story and it confirmed everything. Topography, topography must be accurate. In other words, Jesus facing the people and going this way, the multitudes will follow him. He healed the leper before the multitudes came.

In other words, the multitudes did not see a leper, they saw a cleansed man. There's no need to stone him, right? And not only that, this location goes straight to Capernaum and the next miracle was a centurion servant being healed in Capernaum. So, everything is in line, okay? And then two Encounter night services ago, y'all remember I sang a spontaneous song in the Spirit and that music came from heaven, came from God, right? It's not something that, you know, we have written a song about or whatever, but it came spontaneously to me for the Encounter night. And I sang it out on the Encounter night in the Spirit, and we used that music for this video, right?